Google Drive Offline Document File Location

32
votes

Has anyone discovered where/how offline Google Documents are stored when using Google Drive in Chrome? They must be stored locally but where?

Have tried the browser cache etc but can't see it unless I'm missing something very obvious!

To clarify, the file that is stored within 'My Documents/Google Drive' is a text file with a URL, what I am looking for is where the file that the URL points to is held when in offline mode.

7
google-chromegoogle-drive-api
Shouldn't that be in the "Google Drive" folder in "My Documents"? – simaglei
The offline file that Google stores in 'My Documents/Google Drive' is just a .txt file with a URL. Note this is for Google Documents, I'm sure .doc formats probably are stored within this particular folder. – pjpeers
Upload to GoogleDrive something big, go offline and see which folder size increased. – spyder
I guess we're all too lazy to actually try this. :-) I know I am - thus the bounty. Actually, I was hoping somebody would already know the answer. – DaveGauer
@DaveGauer laziness, impatience, and hubris? :) – spyder

7 Answers

36
votes

It turns out the offline documents are stored in the HTML5 FileSystem.

The Chrome FileSystem storage is located here on my Windows 7 machine:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\File System

I added a number of large images to a document with the Chrome "Offline Docs" enabled and was able to see the FileSystem storage directory grow appropriately.

I then used the HTML5 FileSystem Explorer extension for Chrome to view the file structure of an offline document and was able to confirm that the images were, indeed being retrieved from the HTML5 FileSystem when Chrome was offline. See screenshot:

screenshot of an offline google drive document and its storage of a document in filesystem

7
votes

Further, it may interest you, the location where Google Drive stores offline docs in Android's file system.

sdcard/android/data/com.google.android.apps.docs/

5
votes

Google Drive uses Chrome's IndexedDB for storing data about files. To see the contents, open developer console (Ctrl + Shift + I) and choose Resources tab.

This answer tells you about actual location of IndexedDB in the file system on Windows.

On Linux it's: ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/IndexedDB

0
votes

Mine were all stored in

C:\users\%username%\Google Drive\

Have you downloaded Google Drive?

0
votes

On my computer (Windows 8.1 / Chrome version 41.0.2272.101 m) I found the filesystem at "C:\Users\my username\Appdata\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Profile 1\File System"

I needed to find it because I had some corrupted images in Google Slides (they worked on other computers or other browsers on my computer, just not in chrome on my computer). I deleted the File System directory and shazam, the images reloaded and were no longer corrupted.

-1
votes

Offline access is available only when you’re using Chrome. See Setup Offline Access and Google Docs Offline. It seems like offline documents are encoded by Chrome and stored at some secret places, in order to force you to use Chrome.

-1
votes

Google drive stores the offline files in a folder called... android/data/com.google.android.apps.docs/files/pinned_docs_files_do_not_edit/ in that folder u will find the desired files. Please be aware that... The files that you will find can be of two formats.. 1) encrypted 2) open type

If you have left unchecked the option to encrypt (by default in google drive) the files that u downloaded will be visible, but not accessible by the standard reader. every attempt to read it will be result in a failed operation. But ... if you DISABLED the encryption in google drive, u will be able to open freely with any type of reader.